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The Journey – Prologue to Hell
The Journey – Prologue to Hell is indeed what the book’s title tells all its readers. It gives exactly the train passengers’ experience to those who’d been gathered up from their homes to be transported on it. To what, those passengers had wondered. Given false knowledge of a wonderful life they were being taken to by Nazis who’d dragged them out onto the road into waiting lorries then onto a train, they soon found that was false. They discovered the train journey didn’t lie, though; it showed its passengers the truth long before it ended.
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The Guard Dogs of Babylon
Lewis Henry lived through the post World War II demise of European imperial adventures. After centuries of conflict, genocide and slavery of indigenous peoples to maximise profits from their colonies, the ruling powers confronted each other in a devastating war. The lessons learned from this disaster led to the adoption of more enlightened philosophies, systems of government and social institutions to avoid further destruction on a global scale. Hence, European societies were transformed into welfare states, former colonies gained their ‘independence’, and transport and communications were improved worldwide. The technological revolutions of the 21st century are now creating a global village that requires the elimination of oppression based on gender, class, race, caste and ethnicity so that people may live in peace and prosperity. This novel, by the descendant of slaves whose voices have not been heard for centuries, is a modest contribution to the creation of a better world.
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The Great History of the Manor Bouchove Part 1: Small Village in the Big World
We live in a house in the centre of a small village. With its stately façades and turret, the villagers sweetly call it châtelet. Before us, French noblesse stayed in it, gentry with impressive estates in France. During numerous holiday trips, we located and documented all of it. But that didn't give an answer to the question: How to present it in a digestible...no, into a captivating manner?
How to abridge the centuries and how to connect the turbulent history of Europe with everyday life in the village?
For that purpose, I introduced a family of estate stewards employed by the Masters of Bouchove. After all, ‘masters come and go, but stewards stay’. Besides clerks, marketers and a villain.
Thus, I got a storyline and could start processing the numerous bits and pieces of information into three volumes that give the rich history of Bouchove.£18.99 -
The Golden Threads
Nellie was brought up by her grandparents and lived in the East End of London. At the age of 19, she was able to start the job she had wanted, in a large J. Lyons & Co. Corner House tea room in London, where she became a ‘Nippy’, as the waitresses were called, where she also met her lifelong friend Connie.
Soon after she also met the love of her life, Tommy Brown, but her idyllic life was soon to change with the outbreak of WW2. The comfortable and safe routine of life was soon turned on its head.
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The Girl Who Dressed like a Boy
This story takes place long ago, in a time when the Celts were under threat from all sides. The Saxons, the Welsh, and the Irish all want to settle in the rich land of Briton. The Romans have left, leaving the Celts to fend for themselves. The land is divided into kingdoms, with each king jealously guarding his borders. Only the strong stand, the weak fall.
An old warrior and a young woman are all that are left of their village after a Saxon raid. They embark on a journey to find help and a new home. King Arthur, in the south, needs to be made aware of what is happening in the far reaches of his kingdom.
The world is not a safe place for a young girl, innocent of the ways of men. She soon finds herself being used as a pawn in a game between kings. Her sexual awakening comes at a price, as does her life. She finds that in order to survive, she has to learn many new skills.
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The Emperor's Marble Pavement
The Emperor’s Marble Pavement, the second of four novels about the fall of Constantinople, finds Niccolo Gritti and Demetrius Alexandrou plunged in the turmoil of a city on war’s brink, their friendship complicated by the presence of Theodora, Demetrius’ pious sister and the prostitute Cinnamon. Now in the Emperor’s service, Niccolo must make accommodation with an embattled Venetian merchant colony. The struggle between Constantine’s supporters and those who would appease the Ottomans climaxes in the infamous Service of Union in Hagia Sophia. Then Demetrius disappears, a victim of his peace-party enemies. Niccolo goes in pursuit and the friends are reunited in the Turkish court, under the cynical eye of Mehmet II. Here, courtesy of Nestor-Iskander, a Christian fanatic in the Sultan’s service, they witness the Ottoman siege train’s ominous preparations before fleeing back to Constantinople. In The Emperor’s Marble Pavement, the cross-currents of personal and historical destiny take on new turbulence.
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The Cedars of Beckenham
The Mystery of an Antique German Doll reunites members of a family torn apart during The Third Reich of Nazi Germany.
This family saga, starting in the leafy suburb of Beckenham on the borders of Kent and London, begins in 1930 in the comfortable world of four British upper-middle class families blind to the impending changes that are about to threaten not only their world, but everyone else’s world, too.
A doll belonging to the Abuthnott family becomes the catalyst that brings about two sides of the Rubenstein family, who were able to escape from Germany in the late 1930s finding refuge in the United States of America and in the British Mandate of Palestine.
Along the way, the horrors of the Blitz and the British struggle for survival are enacted out against the parallel Germanic horror of holocaust separation. The survivors in the United States, Great Britain and Israel adapt to a new world as it unfolds through the second half of the 20th century, until by the chance sale of a German Biedermeier doll at Sotheby’s in New York, their separate paths are brought together in 2017.
The four Beckenham families adapt to their changing lifestyles witnessing a rich tapestry of 20th century history taking the reader all over the world with its beauty, passion and prejudices.
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The Boy from Kalimpong
This story is about a boy who grew up in Kalimpong at an approximate distance on a straight line as the crow flies 100 miles (162 kms) towards southeast of the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, amongst the Rong folks, Lepchas the autochthones, ‘Ronkup’, ‘Ronkum’, or ‘Rong’ people. Lepcha people designated as UN ancient tribe, native to the region; and their land ‘Mayel-Lyang’ once bordered further into Tibet, eastern Nepal, western Bhutan and as far south as Siliguri and Jalpaiguri in West Bengal and some parts of Duars than it does today.
Kalimpong part of Lepcha culture was the ridge where Mary and Nigel played happily with unabated joy until his sister, Mary Maung Taung Lai’s early, untimely death and Nigel Kenchinz Lai’s journey to America because of the impact of the 1960 Sino-Indian border war. Many Chinese Indians were stranded, declared stateless, homeless and their inability to get jobs in India caused them to move abroad. Nigel was fortunate to receive four scholarships, four from American universities and one from Canada.
Some parts of the story are true and some portions of this book have been developed that closely parallel the real events experienced by the author. The author and his sister were fascinated with the dragon ‘Thunder and Lightning’, where clouds burst into flashing lightning followed by a big thunder storm every monsoon season. Mr. Karamkurung was their common thread for connection.
Chris Ahoy was born in Kalimpong in 1939. He started at St. Joseph Convent, Kalimpong all girls’ school, co-educational school at Dr. Graham’s Homes, Victoria Boys’ School, Kurseong, St. Xavier’s College Calcutta (Kolkata), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur and University of California, Berkeley, California (UCB), where he received the coveted Regent’s Fellowship Award to complete his masters’ degree in nine months. Chris is a US citizen, served as Assistant Director and Campus Architect at UCB, Statewide Director for Systemwide of Higher Education in Alaska, Assistant Vice President Business and Finance and Director of Facilities Planning and Management at University of Nebraska central offices and finally Associate Vice President for Facilities Planning and Management at Iowa State University. Before retiring in 2010, his organization received the coveted State of Iowa, Iowa Recognition Performance Excellence (IRPE) 2009 Gold Award (State Baldrige Award). After retirement he continues to mentor and provide consulting in ‘Creating World-Class Organization’.
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Tears on the Euphrates
In a harrowing story of lost innocence and shattered identities, two young lives are swept up in a storm of calamity and betrayal. An Iraqi child, ripped from the warm embrace of his family, finds himself in the clutches of strangers in a foreign country. While the boy’s desperate family searches tirelessly for their beloved son, the kidnappers weave a web of lies to erase his past, forging a cruel destiny that will test the bonds of fraternity and love.Against a backdrop of global unrest, the stolen child and his unexpected natural brother try to forge their own paths, tied by a deep friendship, in a world torn apart by violence and deceit. From the uncontrollable violence in Afghanistan to the turbulent waters of the Euphrates, the destiny breaks the sky with a story of love between two who would never imagine loving each other. Among the rubble, death and destruction, the deepest, most real and sincere love story is born. A love rooted in the soul and deep in the heart. Love that glorifies life and means death; the threads of family, love and loyalty will be stretched to the breaking point.Tears on the Euphrates delves into the profound impact of family and identity amid the harsh realities of a world at war, intertwining the fates of two boys with the turbulent geopolitics that define the divide between East and West. Through their eyes, we explore the moving and unyielding search for truth, belonging, and redemption in a world yearning for hope.
£16.99 -
Stigmata of Auschwitz
The Stigmata of Auschwitz is the brief story of the life and love of Rebekah and Gabriel.
The two main characters of the story are a young Jewish couple whose lives bringing up their young child are cut short and sacrificed to an evil Nazi ideology.
The story takes place between March 1938 to September 1941, in the time of the Shoah (the Holocaust).
Gabriel is from Budapest in Hungary, where he is sent on a mission to Munkács in Western Ukraine. There he meets Rebekah. They fall in love, marry and settle in Munkács, where the population is 42% Jewish.
In Munkács Gabriel and Rebekah build up a successful business and public life: he becomes a councillor representing the Jewish community, while she is a member of the Union of Jewish Women. To complete their enviable lifestyle, they have a much-loved baby son.
But their dream is destroyed by the antisemitism unleashed at the outbreak of the Second World War; their life together is ruined by the ruling fascist elite. Consequently, they have departed to Auschwitz, where they are murdered.
However, their two-year-old son is rescued and raised by their neighbour.
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Sanjog A Novel
1946, Dehra Dun, India. The Radcliffe line is drawn and the largest mass migration in history is taking place. 1960, Nairobi, Kenya. A young man is starting a new life as an immigrant Indian with his young family. 2017, Halifax, Canada. A society wedding is bringing family, friends and foreigners together who have not seen each other for years. Three countries, two rivals, two female abductions. Set against a backdrop of post-partition India and Pakistan, 1960s' Kenya and modern-day Atlantic Canada, this tale follows the story of two families, united by heritage, torn apart by hatred. It retells the tragedies of partition violence and the fight to restore human dignity when all is lost. The story of families ripped apart and long-lost buried secrets finally culminate in an outpouring of pent-up grief and injustice that must be avenged. The plight of two women, bound together by history, yet torn apart by time. Sareeta desperately trying to reunite her family against the tides of bygone generations and migration. Gori trying to claw her way out of a poverty, inflicted on her by circumstance and revenge. Women so similar and yet so wildly apart that the idea of any reconciliation seems to be beyond reason. Accented with family recipes handed down through three generations, Sanjog - A Novel will take you back in time to one of the most turbulent events in human history and bring you through a story of love, malice and redemption.
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Rogue Malory
London, 1469. Rogue Malory sets out to show how, ‘comfortably imprisoned’ in Newgate Jail, Sir Thomas Malory works on his magnum opus, Le Morte D’Arthur, with the help of his scribe, Montmorency Pickle, his servant, John Appleby, and his stationer, Jack Worms. The story is an imagined account of the preparation of the famous manuscript, the true revelations of Sir Tom’s disreputable past and the factual events covering the final two years of the ongoing tussle for the crown between the Earl of Warwick and King Edward IV. A combination of real and imaginary events brings to life this arresting period of history.
Reluctantly, Monty and Jack become embroiled in Malory’s political machinations whilst also contending with his dissolute yet magnetic character. Whores, pimps, spies and officials pass in and out of Sir Tom’s cell, where he sits at its centre like a hilarious old spider weaving mischief.
£16.99